Burn Out: Whirlpool tells UK customers to wait a year for repairs

UK: Whirlpool has revealed that owners of the Hotpoint, Indesit and Creda tumble-dryers affected by the recent safety notice may have to wait until January 2017 for a repair.

There are 3.4 million customers in the UK with affected models and Whirlpool has recently stepped up efforts to contact them while also advising that other affected models also include Swan and Proline.

Customers who register affected models, which can be checked through the Hotpoint model checker or theIndesit model checker, are currently being contacted within a 10-week period to arrange for a technician to call. Because of a “first-come, first-served basis”, customers are experiencing a 10-month wait for an appointment.

In an official statement Whirlpool said, “Given the large number of dryers affected, we know our customers are experiencing delays. We apologise for this inconvenience and are working hard to improve response times.

“We are working on first-come, first-served basis, meaning that the earlier customers register, the shorter they will have to wait for a modification. Currently, if a consumer registers today, we will be in contact, on average, within ten weeks to provide an estimated date for an engineer visit. Modification dates are currently being set out as far as January 2017. However, we are confident that this timeline will be reduced as we continue to register consumers, recruit more engineers and increase the resourcing of our call centre.”

In November last year, Whirlpool launched a national repair campaign following investigations into reports of house fires involving Indesit, Hotpoint and Creda tumble-dryers.

Whirlpool estimated that more than five million affected models were sold in the UK between April 2004 and October 2015.

In a bid to reduce waiting times, the company previously announced it was training an addition 350 call centre workers and 350 engineers.